The UNIVERSE is flat.
There’s an economic theory out there that if you take the incomes of your five closest friends and average them, the resulting number will be pretty close to your own income.
I think the same thing is true of idea incomes. You’re only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with.
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| — | Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist |
Social media is like teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. Nobody knows how. When it’s finally done there is surprise it’s not better.
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| — | Avinash Kashuk, Google |
Broadcast today, remember forever.
Social networks are emerging not only as a way to live through the present, but also to remember the past. We have amalgamated mounds of online data in the form of photos, posts, videos, and check-ins. In effect, we’ve created online personas comprised of memories, behaviors, and relationships. As we become more cognizant of this, the ‘social media as diary’ phenomenon propagates. While this era of the web is focused on discovery, it’s important to also note an increased emphasis on rediscovery.
Nostalgia Apps
Myriad ‘digital nostalgia’ apps have surfaced of late. In a nutshell, these apps serve as tools to reminisce and reflect upon past behaviors. PastPosts reminds you exactly what you did on Facebook one year ago. Similarly, 4squareand7yearsago let’s you know of last year’s Foursquare check-ins. Morning Pics delivers past instagram photos to your inbox. Social Memories summarizes your Facebook activity and creates a beautifully designed, printable book. Et al.
Brands have begun to capitalize on the digital nostalgia movement. Razorfish’s Lynx Stream helps users relive their nights out – because, after all, the best nights are the ones you don’t remember. Intel’s Museum of Me is a “visual archive of your social life,” curating a museum featuring your Facebook photos. While the design is sub-par (à mon avis), the concept is certainly on point with our societies increased emphasis on rediscovery.
Flickr as photo storage platform – no longer photo sharing
Thomas Hawk writes, “[Flickr has] lost the soul of photo sharing. They’ve lost the spirit of photo sharing — the zest and the passion and love — and while they got away with that for a long time due to lack of competition, things have now changed.” While Flickr still fulfills a user need, it no longer serves as the staple of online photo sharing it once was.
Bookmarking Platforms
Gimmebar allows users to save pieces of the web into a library and store for later use. Instead of a typical “bookmark”, users can save full content into the cloud – a video, or image, for instance. FFFFOUND! allows users to aggregate their favorite images found on the web. Memolane lets you important content from around the web to later search through. It claims to be “your digital memory, a tool to rediscover your social life on the Internet.” It is a timeline that enables your online data to live on in perpetuity.
A timeline that enables your online data to live on in perpetuity — This sets the stage for my next post, as I have a sneaking suspicion we’ll see a similar timeline quite soon…
